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Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – Removal of the Facebook link button.

I have been on facebook for many years, and certainly for the last six years I have shared my blog posts directly to Facebook. This was particularly useful as it helped me promote not just my own books but those of the authors that I support in the Cafe and Bookstore.

In the last two days all my posts shared to facebook have been blocked as not meeting community standards and in one case as being offensive. Also those trying to share my posts to facebook have also been blocked from doing so.

Apparently I am not the only one, and I have discovered that this is a follow on from several months ago when automatic sharing to facebook from WordPress was discontinued.

The policy on Facebook now has changed under their Fake News conditions that is blocking external URLS from being posted to the site. Clearly because I post a lot each day this caught their attention and hence the current situation.

To say that I am angry and upset is an understatement as this was done without any notice and in a dictatorial manner.

Others have been treated the same and there is word that this is going to allegedly spread through those who currently share external blog posts to the site. I don’t want to be accused of spreading fake news, so I do use the word allegedly.

I have sent an email to the appeals@facebook.com address and await a response if any.

In the meantime, thankfully the majority of the followers to the blog are here and Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn and it will be business as usual..

I have deleted the Facebook share button however as those of you kind enough to share there, are being blocked from doing so anyway.

I have joined the emerging site MeWe with others from Facebook but it will take time to populate. It does offer a more user friendly approach (for the time being) and if you are interested in joining us there then here is my link where you can find out how to sign up.

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About Smorgasbord - Variety is the Spice of Life.

My name is Sally Cronin and I am doing what I love.. Writing. Books, short stories, Haiku and blog posts. My previous jobs are only relevant in as much as they have gifted me with a wonderful filing cabinet of memories and experiences which are very useful when putting pen to paper. I move between non-fiction health books and posts and fairy stories, romance and humour. I love variety which is why I called my blog Smorgasbord Invitation and you will find a wide range of subjects. You can find the whole story here.
Find out more at https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/about-me/

So sorry to hear that. I do share a lot of your posts to Facebook. Occasionally, I have been flagged when I’ve shared an external blog post–and am never told why–but most of the time, they make it through.

Sally, all I can suggest sally is that you set up a peadophile ring, or post hate rants on facebook as I am sure, given Facebooks track record, you would have no problems getting all your comments on then. No, I’m not a big fan as you know. I always thought facebook to be a necesary evil that I feel is becoming, more and more, unnecessary neve rmind irrevelant. And that’s me banned from Facebook! O well I’ll live! Pxx

Thanks Paul and you are probably right.. I seem to be able to post comments on my profile and will make best use of that for the time being until I have made my point and also said my goodbyes….. I have the bulk of my contacts on Twitter, linked in and the blog but facebook was also a good place with lots of authors and was helpful when promoting author and posts from here… I am just miffed at the way they have done it… hugsxxx

I think those of us who share a lot are being hit first… not just our own blog posts (and I know that I blog a great deal each day) but when we share others too… Debby Gies has now been hit with the same thing.. does not bode well.. xx

Early February, I had to send FB appeals against the blocking of over 130 blog posts that had been manually uploaded, by me, to my timeline, and automatically uploaded, by WordPress Publicize, to my FB Promotion of New Authors and Books Page.
It took me some time, but I wanted to make my point (similar to paying an unjust fine, or bill, in pennies 😂)
They were all reinstated within 24 hours.
I know that FB are under a LOT of pressure to combat all kinds of issues, including Fake News, so they’ve probably tweaked their algorithms to do blanket blocking and letting humans deal with any appeals and complaints.

Thanks Chris.. I have appealed everyone but I see others have been hit too such as Debby Gies.. all in the last couple of days.. they won’t be able to deal with all the appeals.. someone in their marketing department has just made a monumental error… This will not encourage more people to have pages…. just to leave… hugsx

There are 75 million blogs on WordPress alone and if they can no longer share their posts on their personal profiles, then it is going to have a very definite impact on Facebook.. It if is about only posting to pages that does not work for me as I find myself spending an extra half hour a day jumping through the hoops on pages these days. It is a mess….xxxx

I more or less abandoned FB a while ago when it began getting messy. The posts still go to the author page and I usually post one or two to the personal page…for now, till they ban me too. It did have an impact when they changed the publisize feature, but not as much as I thought it would. I do not think FB is as ‘necessary’ as it once was. Its golden age is over and people are looking elsewhere.

I agree Sue and I just got rid of my author page because it was too much hassle to maintain and navigate and simply had the same followers as were on my personal profile but not to the same extent.. Over ten years you build up a great bunch of contacts and it was a useful way to keep in touch.. this is blatant censorship and it will backfire when you consider how many millions of bloggers use to share their posts… hugs xxx

Are you sure it isn’t just the change they’re rolling out to prevent sharing on personal FB pages? They decided to do that because they didn’t want sales being generated from personal pages. My author page is still getting posts directly from WP …

Apparently it is to do with their new fake news policy and they are blogging URLS and also shares from Twitter… I don’t want a page again… all it did was create more work each day to maintain a personal account and it was the same people on both. Whatever their reason treating us like criminals is not the answer… they should have given us notice that they were going to block our blog posts as offensive.. xxx

Calling them offensive is just ridiculous, I agree. Perhaps if there were actual people working there and everything wasn’t done by machines, they’d be able to solve this mess. What a hassle! Sorry you’re going through this, Sally. 😦

I had some emails from people Linda who had tried to share using the button but had got the same message as I did and were concerned so felt it wise for the time being anyway to take it off.. I am going to try and post on Sunday with my round up which links to all my posts for the week and see if that goes through..If it does then I will put the FB button back.. xxx

Sally this is awful. I am in the same boat as you I have been Barred since Saturday. I have sent an email to the address you have used appeals@facebook.com but it keeps bouncing back. Either it is wrong, discontinued or they just can’t be bothered to look at it.
We know there is nothing subversive or nasty in our blogs. I shall be joining you at MeWe. Up Fa ebook

Unbelievable! They are so big the whole site is out of control at this point. I’m sorry to hear of your trouble and it is distressing considering the traffic that is generated from this platform. I have no doubt you will continue to thrive in whatever outlet you post in, Sally!

Sally, I just tried posting this to Facebook. I was blocked and sent the following to FB via “Report a Problem.” I intend to join you at MeWe, and I will share the following with my FB friends, obviously with no links for now.

Block quote
I am a blind author of the educator-recommended young adult novel “The Heart of Applebutter Hill.” As a blogger I rely on the kindness of other bloggers like Sally Cronin at Smorgasbord Blog Magazine to help me promote my work. I recently tried to post a link to her blog and got the message
Block quote
Can’t Download
Could not retrieve data from URL.
Block quote end

I copied the URL from my browser’s address bar and tried again with the same results. I understand other people are having problems sharing their WordPress posts to Facebook. What’s going on? If you think Sally is spreading fake news, you should read some of her posts. She has a lot of followers and helps other authors by featuring interviews with them and posting blogs from their archives – this year it’s on the theme of family life. I urge you to fix this issue.

Thank you so much Donna that is an amazingly supportive message and I am grateful.. It looks like it is going to hit more people over the coming days as they block any blog posts that do not get shared to a page rather than a personal profile.. It is a shame and whilst I still have other good options to share posts to, Facebook reached a great many authors and readers… hugs xxx

Sally, My FB post was shared twice so far. I agree with you about pages. I don’t have an FB page for my book, and I don’t want one. I find the pages difficult to navigate – though that might just be me.

Thank you Donna… the pages are difficult to navigate which is why I gave mine up… I will work other things out to support authors but FB is going to feel a world of hurt if they do this to 75 million bloggers on WordPress alone… hugs for all the support

Hi Sally,
Sharing how you feel is totally within your right, and you did this in a professional manner.
I’m sorry you’ve had such a bad experience with FB. Social media is constantly changing. I find it difficult to keep up with all.
Blessings,
Tracy

Thanks Diana.. Debby has been hit now and it looks like anything shared to a personal profile rather than a page is blocked.. I just deleted my page a couple of days ago because it was so much work managing two accounts when they were duplicated anyway… Will do a work around but it is shoddy customer service all the same.. hugsx

Sal, I’ve become a victim too today. I’ve left messages on our group site about my experience too. I too am just getting used to Mewe where our friend Colleen has already gone and paving the way for us setting up groups. It is user friendly and completely private, a big plus for messaging and chatting when data stealers aren’t intercepting our private chats. I;ve tried to contact them also to no avail. I await to hear from you what they say, and most likely we’ll be packing up permanently if we aren’t allowed to post there, for duh,,,,,,, that’s what we’re doing there! ❤

And it does impact the group too Debby where we are admins.. I had the two posts that I was posting there shot down as well… so unfortunately not just to my personal account. I will keep FB open for the time being and I can still do admin work but I will not be posting anything… hugs ♥

I had many of the same problems, Sally. I love MeWe and we can set up groups. Everything has to be pretty much manually shared in the groups but it all works great on our main page. I’m so happy I left FB. ❤️❤️❤️

Colleen, I created my site at MeWe. It’s a good idea to set up a group there.

Sally, I noticed that other people can’t find the share button on my post. When they notified me, I created a post directly on their Facebook.
I remember being able to enter many friend’s names and share the same post all at once. Now I have to enter one name at a time. FB has really changed over the years. What made me mad is that the advertisements take up 1/4 of the space. The column for advertisement is as wide as the posts. As soon as I bought something, all the advertisements for that product just flood in as if ghosts following me on what I do.

Glad to hear that Miriam. I love MeWe. You have to manually share your posts, but it all works. The chat features are especially nice. We can chat anytime we want. I like that. You can send me baby hummingbird photos. ❤

Sally, I’m thinking that the only work-around that might work is to post a non-active link, but how many followers are going to take the time to write it out and then enter into their browser’s Open dialog. BTW, we’re up to four shares of my FB post.

Thank you so much Donna… I really appreciate it.. I am going to try and post my round up link on Sunday as that leads back to all my posts which people can read when they get here. If that goes up then I will just post once a week and post daily elsewhere.. thank you for your support… hugs Saly

Sally, I think this is a way the sites are trying to stop the spread of fake news. I deleted my page on FB because no one could ever find my posts. When they were in the groups we were fine but I understand that is affected now too. What a waste. We can make MeWe work for us. ❤

It is about fake news Colleen but it is also about money. However few people pay to boost their posts on pages, it is still in the millions. They want to move anything that smacks of personal or promotion for others into pages. I think mine was triggered because I deleted my page a few days ago because it was too much hassle to navigate and cost me time each day despite the followers being identical to the ones on my personal account. The impact will come for FB when 75 million wordpress bloggers get treated the same way when they share their posts to their personal pages…. ♥

You know how frustrated I’ve been. The pages were fine when there was a pages feed. That’s all I read. But when that disappeared I couldn’t find anyone’s pages and posts. I refused to play their game. Last week I must have received 20 messages from them asking to pay for ads. It was the greatest when I hit the delete button. MeWe always sharing to your contacts with the add to any share bookmarklet on your browser. If you’re on google chrome you can get the add to any extension for your browser. In the MeWe groups we have to manually add our posts. I think few sites are allowing the blog posts to automatically share because of the control of fake news. In 2016 it was insane leading up to the election. I knew then FB was broken. It turned into a weapon. I’ll be creating the Literary Diva’s Hangout group on MeWe in just a bit. This will give folks a place to share also. Hang in there. ❤️❤️❤️

Thanks Colleen.. I am going to attempt to post the URL for my weekly round up and hope that only being once a week will be let through, then anyone who would like to read the posts can do so then. I gave up my page for the same reason.. always wanting 16 or 20 dollars to boost just one post… not playing that game either…If I cannot post my round up on Sunday then I will keep for my contacts with friends and family and visit once a week to catch up… but will focus on MeWe for the time being.. I hear there is voice messaging so will look into that.. thank you for all the support.. now I have a poem to write……..♥♥

I haven’t had the problem YET either but I am sure they will get around to me …They did send me a happy 11-year anniversary video they had compiled for me…very nice(said sarcastically) I have removed the facebook share button just because I could…MeWe here we come xxxx

I can’t share anything from here at all at the moment and have taken off the FB button.. I can try to insert the URL in your page but it defeats the object if it is not reaching all my contacts… in the scale of things Facebook is a small number and I am going to focus on building up the others to keep to the reach… hugsxx ♥

Okay… let’s see what happens when 75 million bloggers.. just on WP jump ship.. perhaps we need to talk to the admin people on MeWe to see if they can work with WP to have an automatic link to them…hugsx

I’m so sorry this happened, Sally. I do know FB was cracking down on links from personal pages (They wish it to be more about friends and family connecting, instead of promo) but it’s sad that they did what amounts to a unilateral cull.
I haven’t had an issue yet, but I share posts to my author page and book groups made for promo purposes, so maybe that’s the difference. Anyway, I guess I’ll just have to catch you here 🙂

Thanks Jacquie… they want to make money and even if you don’t always take up their offer to promote a post for a few dollars on the pages they are making millions. The fact that my promotions are free for authors does not make a difference, I am promoting people to buy books and Facebook is not making money from that. I don’t share much personal stuff on my facebook profile anyway but I am on Twitter, LinkedIn and will make more use of my pinterest… and here of course where it will be business as usual. hugs xxx

I don’t have a problem with that Wayne.. but there is no way my posts on health, humour cookery and books is political… but clearly they feel that they are not conforming to community standards in some way and I will see if I can get the problem resolved.. obviously guilty until proven innocent… hugsx

I think that they consider I post too much Wayne… irrespective of content.. thing is my followers keep increasing.. and all someone has to do is switch me off if they don’t like it! 4000 people can’t be that bothered…. I really would be up in arms if your photographs were stopped… as would a lot of people…hugsxx

Thanks for the support Toni…but it looks like if you have a page where they can make money from you, you can post what you like, but if it is to your personal profile then you are censored. I will see what comes back today but it looks like others such as Debby Gies are also impacted and even posting to groups is being denied… this is going to backfire if they apply to the 75 million bloggers who share their posts to Facebook… thankfully the majority of my contacts are here, Twitter, LinkedIn and it will be business as usual… hugsx

This happened to us last week, and I tried asking both FB and WP why this was happening. I included WP, because they were playing silly buggers with the FB share button at the time. They managed to discover the reason, so I appealed to FB. It took several goes, and different ways of doing it, (finding anything on there is well nigh impossible) but eventually, I received the message that they ‘would look into it’. Several days later, (about the same time that WP reinstated the share button) I was allowed to link my posts to FB again.
It would seem that repeated requests worked, so if at first you fail, don’t give up!
I wonder what they will think of next? But I have joined WeMe, just in case!

Thanks Jaye.. will leave well alone at the moment and have left my FB button off deliberately as a number of people were getting the same message as I was that they were not allowed to share my posts… I have sent numerous messages and will see what happens.. I will look out for you on MeWe… hugs xx

I don’t think FB likes authors who post purchase links to their books or other authors’ books on a regular basis. I’ve sussed this out over a period of time, and I think the trick is not to post book links too often.

Probably Jennie… I have reinstated the button this morning and will only be posting my round up on a Sunday.. I don’t want to leave FB entirely as I have lots of friends and family there and we keep in touch that way.. but I am always keen to explore other sites to share the promotional posts especially.. hugsx

It’s interesting, Sally. I view WordPress for interesting stories and writing. I view Facebook for short writing, mostly photos, and keeping in touch with friends and family. I think the two are far different. And the time I spend reading is primarily done on WordPress. I don’t think I’m alone on this. So, can you keep Facebook for friends and family and WordPress for writing? I’m sure it’s much more complicated than that! Hugs to you, Sally! 🙂

Hi Jennie.. that is the plan..I only share links to Facebook to my blog and personal messages for family and friends and don’t use FB for anything else.. I don’t think it was length of post, but their robots picked up key words in the URLS which they determined were not within community standards. They are paranoid at the moment and are removing videos from Youtube and other external sources because of being accused of allowing fake accounts and new to influence the last US election. I have a friend who is raising money for charity whose latest video from YouTube was removed. Going forward I am only going to post my weekly round up on Facebook. I will keep the account as you say to stay in touch with my friends and family but things are not going to improve. Facebook have announced that they are going to merge Instagram, Whatsapp and Messenging (FB messages) by 2020… I understand (might be fake news) that 15 million people have already closed their accounts. It will be interesting to see where it goes from here… hugsxx

Very interesting, Sally! Yes, they’re paranoid and scrambling to clean up their mess. And in the process hundreds of thousands of users are unjustly suffering. They have really shot themselves in the foot. I hope every WP user drops their non-personal account and runs over to MeWe. Please keep us posted! Big hugs!!

Social media is just ridiculous overall. I enjoy FB because I connect with family and friends and my page shares my Sunday Stills participants’ posts. I can’t believe it has come to this point, Sally! I enjoy Instagram and Facebook as my outlet to share my photos (no other real way to do do) but I am down to 2 days a week because I’m frustrated with all the ads! Good luck sorting it out, I will be checking out MeWe, too.

I know Terri.. it sucks up time and most of the time it is out of our control… but like you I shall stay with FB for the time being because of friends and family and share other’s posts, and mine once a week.. Hope to see you on MeWe..hugsx

I was sharing a blog tour for Jim Webster on my personal Facebook page. I was able to get the first two days then on the third day, it was considered “Spam” and not within Community Guidelines. I thought it was that particular post. When it happened the next day, I mentioned that I wouldn’t be able to continue sharing the story because it was considered Spam by Facebook. That was sad that I wasn’t able to continue to share. Thanks to your blog post, I now know that it wasn’t just me.

I’m sorry to hear this, Sally. With so many reviews removed from Amazon, people banned from social media, and all the ones who are actually causing problems being left alone to post what/where/when they want… Makes me angry.

Well, lovely lady. I’m not on FB so won’t miss you there. 🙂 I see you here and on Twitter. And, perhaps, I’ll see you now on MeWe. I read about MeWe on Colleen’s blog and will definitely check it out. Cheers. ❤

I know Sarah.. censorship… and they only want people who will respond to their adverts… that is the only way they make money. As for Amazon… they too are under the control of robots.. they say that in the future AI will take over the world, and it seems to have made a start in social media…hope to see you on MeWe… hugs ♥